As I said to both Night and Dark Cloud when the system went up, toggle-able hit detection would only ever be a temporary solution and that it would not exist once an all-round enjoyable hit detection was up and running. Players should not be exposed to the inner-workings of a game onless they choose to be; exposing the HD differences like this goes against that. All the player really cares about is that when they try to fight an opponent, the combat seems fair and is enjoyable.
The major problem is that both clientside and serverside approaches will have their own unique characteristics and these will favour certain events more than others.
- Serverside hit detection gives you a very low delay between slashing your sword and the hit connecting, but there is also a delay between getting hit y an attack and starting to recoil away from it. The low attacking delay makes it easier to attack a player who is trying to run away from you, but the delay when defending means you often have to dodge early. In theory, players with a high ping should be disadvantaged as they will experience a higher delay in both their attacks and their defending. I find that the lower attack delay makes serverside HD suitable for more frantic or high paced types of fights, such as guild wars or CTF.
- Clientside hit detection on the other hand has a long delay between swinging your sword and the attack being registered on the opponents screen (literally, it's the delay until the animation of you swinging the sword appears for them), but it has no delay when being attacked. If you appear to be attacked on your own screen, then you were. The high attacking delay means you have to slash a long time in advance for the hit to register. The greater the combined ping of the fighters, the further in advance you have to attack, but this delay works both ways (so a laggy fight is harder, but neither player should have a distinct advantage). Because you have to plan your attacks in advance and you can dodge with zero delay, you have to fight tactically and try to trick the opponent into making mistakes. I find that this tactical style of fighting is well suited to one on one fights such as sparring.
And that's the problem. There will never be a method of hit detection that is perfect for everone until we all have super fast internet connections with zero latency. You can do tricks to try and hide the negative points of each approach, but ultimtely you cant completely obscure them. The key is to try and be 'fun enough' on as much as possible, rather than being excellent at a few things and unplayable on all the rest.
If and when the toggle is removed, the HD will be whatever is the 'overall' most enjoyable for the server. I don't particularly care if it's serverside, clientiside or a hybrid approach; providing a setup that players enjoy is the main concern for me.
